Overcome Your Exhaustion To Improve Your Personal Life and the Lives Around You As Well

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and I am thrilled to have Vanessa Horan on the show today. Hello Vanessa, how are you?

My pleasure, thank you Brad.

And I just want to tell you a little bit about Vanessa because she is a world shaking groundbreaking entrepreneur. She's the CEO of Vanessa Horn International, a global business and personal development company and marketing agency. She's a sought after speaker, business coach, author, and she's just cut out two books, I'll have what she's having and Profit with honor. She has an MBA in entrepreneurship and leadership and over the last 11 years Vanessa successfully managed being a mom of three boys. Wow, that's good enough in and of itself. While also building and selling several businesses including building a multi million dollar network marketing business and online coaching business, she worked with over 20,000 purpose driven entrepreneurs to help them build successful businesses. Working just four hours a day, her expertise is helping you create high end clients and multiple six figures online without having to blog, do social media, have a website or any of the traditional busy work that most entrepreneurs think that they have to do. She's all about creating big impact and income from a place of grace and ease. She's been featured on national television, radio and magazines for her work and she and her husband of 18 years and their sons currently live in North Carolina. Thank you so much for being on the show, Vanessa. We really appreciate you being here, so let's just get it kicked off in the right way. Let's talk a little bit about your background and kind of how you came to be where you are today. Obviously we've heard the kind of byline, but what do you think was the main shift or the main aha moment that brought you from the world you were in, like the hero's journey of you will to now the world of entrepreneurship.

Fourteen years ago I was pregnant with my first son and that pregnancy brought me out of any cocoon of safety that I felt like I had to pursue out of any kind of experience of feeling like I need to hold on to my corporate check because I was working in Fortune 500 companies straight out of my MBA, but having that son growing in my belly, I said I want to have the flexibility to be home with Him. Now, prior to that, my husband had been the one who was a risk taker. He was the one who had been pursuing multiple dreams. I think actually in our first 13 years of marriage, he had tried like 12 different things. And I was like, no, thank you very much. I'll hold on to my check over here. Except when I had my son and I was so desperate to be able to have the time, flexibility, but also being the breadwinner in our family, I had to be smart. I couldn't afford to make the wrong move. And it ended up being the catalyst for me being able to be courageous. But since then, I've, you know, as shared in the bio. I've built and sold multiple businesses and have learned many, many lessons along the way in that journey. And one of my biggest beliefs about entrepreneurship is it is the premier personal development classroom. It will stir up all your business, all your internal business on your path to building a business. Because it's so common for us as entrepreneurs to take the journey personally. When things go wrong, we think, what's wrong with me? What am I not getting? When we face challenges, we think they're personal. And the thing about it is being an entrepreneur takes an immense amount of emotional fortitude. And I've faced that some lessons over and over and over when I've thought, like, oh, check, move on, I've learned that lesson. It repeats itself and comes in a different form for me to go deeper in my own personal development and growth.

I love that. And I always love listening to the things that people say as a function of what they must believe in order to say it. And I actually have a little note card here that I keep on my wall. Just peel it off, just to make this quick point is like, you know, these are the five agreements, right? That started with the four agreements. And then Don Miguel Ruiz's son wrote the fifth agreement. And one of them is to never take anything personally. And that's one of the things that you said that I really loved and I appreciate because ultimately, we're all here to learn. We're here to grow. And in this life, like, what do we really own here, right? We can make up a story about how this is all ours, but it's going to be gone the second we pass away. And maybe there's legacy in other generations, but really we have a very temporal, small existence here. We can do what we do. We can shuffle the sand as we shuffle it. We can leave behind the legacy we leave. At the end of the day, you really can't Take it personally if things don't work out, because maybe bigger and better things are opening up for it. And I know you have a million experiences like that. I sure do.

Well, and the thing that I believe also, when you're talking about these guiding principles or these agreements, is that unfortunately, along the path, many of us entrepreneurs believe that some destination is going to hold what we want most. Oh, when I make. Fill in the blank, you know, Rockefeller, when asked, how much do you need to make? He said, one more dollar. That's most of us. It's the next goal. If we're at six figures, we want to do multiple six figures. If we're. That we want a million, we want 5 million. Want. Tell me a million. Like, one more. Next threshold. Why? Because in our minds, it embodies a something that we believe that we'll be able to enjoy once we finally get there. For me, the illusion was once I achieved a ethereal number of success, whatever that was, one of my businesses, our most successful businesses, did multiple millions a year. And even then, I was not experiencing what I wanted most, which was grace and ease and leisure. Grace and ease and leisure. And I'll tell you, I just want to tell this personal story because what I've learned in this last. And we can dive into it further if you want, but in the last nine months, I had recovered from a severe adrenal exhaustion, which really had me dive in deeper to evaluate. Okay, what are you chasing after? Vanessa. And it's not like I haven't experienced burnout in the past. I have. It's why it's the basis of so much of my work. But this was a new threshold for me. And it's funny, because I was at a yoga class, and this gal. Because I enrolled in yoga because I was trying to heal from my adrenal exhaustion, and I had pared back so many of my commitments, and I was so much more mindful of personal care. And this gal in the yoga class that overheard her, and she was telling the other gal, yeah, I don't really have anything to do today. I think I'm gonna run to Harris Teeter, and I got lunch with the girls, but just call me. And, you know, she got in her Range Rover and, you know, her fit body, and it was like this illusion, like, to me, you know, being very vulnerable. Like, to me, that was kind of like, oh, like that's what I somehow believed that my life, once I got to some achievement level, would allow me the flexibility to do that. Lunch with the girlfriends. No, don't really have anything. But what I realized was it was. It was an illusion. And I stopped for a moment and I'm like, wait, I'm here in my yoga class today. I've structured my day in my business because I only want to work four hours a day. So I've done that. I've made a commitment to being present with my kids. I've made a commitment to wherever I am, to be fully present there. And I've been missing all these gifts along the way all these years. Being an entrepreneur, thinking that I'll someday experience leisure when it was me who wasn't giving myself the permission to enjoy that, to celebrate the achievements that I had made instead of always striving for the next one. I love that.

Vanessa, you basically hit on the key point is like, enjoy the journey and you're the jailer and you have the key to get yourself out of jail. So you hit on a few really key points. And I want to kind of pull on some of these threads, you know, to unravel the sweater and get to the. To the naked truth, if you will, to use a terrible metaphor. But you mentioned the sense of more, more, more. Right. Just another dollar, which is like growth without contribution, essentially. And growth without the contribution would be like the motto of cancer. Right? There's no reason for all this growth. We're just taking up more resources for no particular reason. How did you shift from that to now being purpose driven? Because I've had a similar experience in my own life, but I think it would be really great. You know, they're probably tired of hearing me talk about it. But what was like, that real shift? It was like, okay, I have all this money, and for whatever reason, it wasn't serving or whatever reason it felt compulsive or addictive. And then how did you make that transition into that purpose driven life or that life of grace, ease and leisure that you were talking about?

So the purpose driven component was always present, has always been present. The grace, leisure, and ease has not. So what? But I think that there's something super important for us to recognize for some of us who are entrepreneurs and have this archetype of building success, building achievement. So for me, it was this. It was driven by wanting to make a contribution. So I've always been driven to make a difference in other people's lives with my work. However, it underlyingly was also because I had come from some pretty. You know, sometimes I discount what I've been through because I'm all coach. So I've Heard all kinds of people's backgrounds. But I've come in recent years to give more respect for some of the traumatic experiences that I had as a child. But with that, there was some of my own survival that was, that was at risk. And financially, I mean, my, my mom is from Brazil. My dad and her met as hippies, and we're on this mission to travel the world on a spiritual pilgrimage. Early 70s, right? So here I was born to them. I was actually born when they were in India visiting the Dalai Lama. And it wasn't because they had an abundance of money that was giving them the funds to travel this. They were just like, as entrepreneurs, making it work to afford their spiritual pilgrimage. Okay. And so what they would do is they would go to a country and maybe sell jewelry or go to a country and buy the cars of Europeans that were leaving and then selling them to people. Americans coming and they had different entrepreneurial things that they would do to be able to continue to afford their. Their journey. And as a child, we went through some really, I mean, living on dirt floors and in third world countries with no windows and, you know, home births for all five of us kids and, you know, experiencing depths of like, real hunger, you know, and just our safety being at risk and, you know, so as a child, that was traumatic to my nervous system. That was traumatic to me to say, okay, I'm going to make something different in my life. And although I experienced an amazing experience seeing different parts of the world, there were parts that were, that were shocking that I didn't actually experience, you know, be able to heal until I was an adult experiencing the depths of it. But when I went into anything in my career, it was purpose driven. And what I've experienced along the way is recognizing so much of what I was striving for. The success, the achievements, the just one more dollar in my bank account and I will feel secure. Were to try to compensate for some of those emotions that I felt as a child. And it wasn't until I went through the depths of feeling the pain of those emotions and realizing, like, your survival is not at question, Vanessa, you are going to make it. You don't have to fear the future, that it allowed me to really embrace that I could create success from grace and ease. And that instead of a constant striving subconscious, what's the name of my consciousness drive to secure myself or even to receive accolades and success to affirm my value in the world. And so when I was able to strip away all these other reasons that were driving my Success and now be able to say, you know what? There's a message that wants to pour through me to serve others. There's a body of work that I can do to serve others. There's skill sets that I have that can serve others. And now that I'm embracing grace and ease while also building a business, it gives me the freedom to say no to clients I don't want to. It allows me to say no to things that I gauge. How much energy does it take to do that? I don't no longer have to feel like I'm helping people. I have to say yes to every opportunity to help people, to validate that I am helping people. And so it just helps me be wiser about the choices that I'm making instead of allowing my subconscious to be driving what I'm doing. Does that make sense?

It makes a lot of sense, Vanessa. And you hit on something I think is insidious in the entrepreneurial community. And there's a lot of. Really, a lot of leadership voices talking about the hustle and respecting, you know, that and. And all that. And I think that's a part of it. Right. I think that hustling is a really valuable tool. But if every tool is a hammer and every problem is a nail, and you're always trying to hit the hammer with the nail, and not every, you know, and every problem presents as that, then you're probably going to end up burning yourself out pretty quick, right? Because you can hustle yourself in the ground. You talked about adrenal fatigue, and it's real. I mean, there's more entrepreneurs now. Just female entrepreneurs that I've met recently, like Sarah Blakely and Arianna Huffington, have all had issues with this, you know, kind of burnout, stress. And they're. They're working now to make sure that people get more sleep and take better care of themselves and not completely burn the candle on both ends. Because the mandate of society is you have to hustle so hard that you just break. But in reality, when you kind of graduate past hustle and look at it as like, how do I flow and get leverage? And what opportunities am I here to serve? What are my swim lanes? And then being able to say no, because if you can trust your no and set your boundaries and you can really trust your yes as well, and you can really go all in on something instead of feeling like an entrepreneurial squirrel. And we've all done this squirrel, you know, kind of thing where everything pulls our attention away. And I just wish that message would resonate with more people, yes, hustle's fine, but it's gonna burn you out. So that's a tool. It's not the only tool. Try to find some more tools to get what you need.

Well, and frankly, I believe that hustle is, you know, will hustle. Hustle will cover up for lack of discernment?

Yes.

So either you can increase your hustle and potentially burn out, or take the time to increase your discernment. Be mindful about what you're saying yes to. Hustle will also cover up for lack of skill set growth and mastery. So hustle more or spend more time mastering your skill sets of marketing, of sales, of your actual work that you do. And so I would rather instead of covering it up with hustle, because I've been down that road. I spend much more time now over here in the Spending time in discernment skill set mastery. And that has allowed me to say yes to fewer things, including operating only in my zone of genius, which then is from a greater sense of grace and ease, because I'm not having to compensate by hustling. And frankly, I hate to say it, but adrenal exhaustion affects more women than it does men. And if you pay attention to the message that's taking place in the marketplace around hustle, it's a. It's typically coming from men, and it's fine. Men maybe have that energy to keep going and not be affected by the adrenal exhaustion. However, adrenal exhaustion and fatigue is being called the 21st century ailment of women, although men do experience it as well. And so I think that there's an important distinction that each of us. And I think that I don't like to separate the men from the women. I think that we're all individuals, that it's important for us to pay attention to our own bodies. It's important for us to pay attention to how do we honor ourselves, how do we have proper boundaries for ourselves? And something that may work for somebody else, whether they're male or female, may not work for us. And then we have to honor that and pay attention. And so if there's anything I would urge your listeners is to say, if there is something that is not resonating with you as a means by which to create success, honor that in yourself. Find mentors, find examples, find other evidence that has to potentially rewire your brain to say, yes, I can create the same, if not greater success from grace and ease instead of just hustle. I know I had to do that at first. I didn't believe it. I thought, really, I can back off and experience grace and ease and experience the same success. And I had to create example after example after example in my own life for my brain to get it to relax and to create new neurological pathways of like, this is the way to operate and do my business. And I'll just give you an example. When I was selling my network marketing business, the reason why I sold that business was because I was so passionate. My coach asked me a question, and he said, vanessa, if this were the last year of your life, what would you do? And I said, I have to share my message. I've been peddling products. I've been peddling somebody else's message for so many years. I want to go uninhibited with my own work and my own message. And that's what led me to the world of coaching and speaking and training and building that business. And when I sold my network marketing business, in order to do that, I had a lot of people on my team who said, oh, you're abandoning us. You're abandoning us. And of course, as being a helper person, being the kind of person who cares about others, I was like, oh, my gosh, I can't abandon them. I can't abandon them. And there's a Mary Oliver poem, actually, that's called the Journey, and she says that one day you finally woke up and you followed the voice that you needed to. You finally let go of the hands that were clawing at you that said, mend my life. Mend my life. And you listened to the voice that was your own. And for me, it was like, that's what I had to do. And what I ended up choosing was distinctively, ok, how can I empower my team to have everything they need to be successful without me? And then I ended up changing my focus to this other direction. And my team grew, our volume grew. We became number two in the company. I actually sold at the peak of our growth, and I hadn't been involved in it for seven months. And that was a way that it was evidence to me that, Vanessa, honor yourself. You don't have to hustle more in order for something to grow, you have to be smart. And that was one of many examples. And unfortunately, sometimes I can dip back into the okay, hustle, or working harder will compensate for what I want to accomplish. And I have to pull myself back and say, wait, wait, wait, don't go on autopilot. Don't go back into that, because you know where that leads. And so it's a practice for me to step into the flow of creation instead of just the hustle.

I love that. So for people just starting out, maybe they are interested in entrepreneurship. Maybe they want to kind of step into this world that we're talking about. Right? They see the success. Let's ground it for them. Like, what were some of the first actions you took? What were some of the first feelings you felt when you embarked on this journey?

Well, two feelings that will always be present. Excitement and fear. And if you pay attention to the body, the sensations are actually the same. It's just what our imagination chooses to do with it. So we can use our imagination to create the worst case scenario, which creates anxiety and fear in the body, or we can use the imagination to create possibility. So I even had. I used to deal with the fear that I could lose it all because I was like an all in kind of a person. So we took. I took all of our savings of five years of us being dual income, no kids, we'd saved one income for five years. I took all that savings and put it into our entrepreneurial ventures. And I had this fear, like, oh my gosh, we could end up homeless. My coach actually asked the question, what is the worst that you think that could happen? I was like, I could end up homeless. And then I imagine, what would that be? Like, I would be in a homeless shelter. And then I went down that path. I allowed myself to, like, play that out. And I was like, okay, wait, I'm in a homeless shelter. You know what? I have my husband, whom I love, and I, who loves me. And at that time, we didn't have kids. We were about to have our first son. And then I was like, and then if we have our son, we'll have that. We'll have love. And then I was like, and I know me, like, I can see efficiencies. I can create and make things better. I'm an empowerer of people. So pretty soon we can turn around that homeless shelter. All those people are empowered. We have like the best performing homeless shelter that exists. Then I'll be asked to come and speak at other homeless shelters to turn around their situation. And pretty soon we'll probably be franchising homeless shelters. And I realized, like, and I was like, and I've got connections to the bedding industry so we can get luxury beds donated. I was like, as long as I have a good bed, I'm good. And I realized, like, I'm gonna be okay. I'm gonna be okay. And so it Allowed me, like, going the fear route. That was like, my imagination playing that out. But then I went down the path of, like, okay, let my imagination play out of the good. And then I was like, okay, let's play out. I'm on Oprah's coat on her couch, and she's asking me, vanessa, how did you do it? How did you get here? What did you do? And I just allowed my mind to go down the whole path of, like, Oprah interviewing me. And I was like, who do I need to be as a person to. How do I want to show up on Oprah's couch? How can I be that person now? Not dependent on the successes, but on the internal person that I am. My character, the way I choose to show up in the world, what I'm going to put into myself, into my mind, what I'm going to allow the people I'm going to allow around myself so that I'm the kind of person that if you talk, if I'm on your show or on Oprah's, I'll be the same person. That's the truth. And so that's what I experienced when I first started out as an entrepreneur, is seeing that, okay, first, fear and excitement, they're the same sensations in the body. And I get to control where this imagination goes.

Yeah, I heard a really great quote. My friend Peter Scott, the fearless leader. He's a fearless life.

I know him.

Yeah, Peter's great. So he. He has a great quote. I think he borrowed it. But it's fear is just excitement without the breath. It's the same in the body. It's just forgetting to breathe. That was a really great one. Another thing that kind of triggered me is that idea of fear setting. Right. Tim Ferriss loves to talk about fear setting. Like, really, what's the worst that could happen? And write it down and really go there and then think, okay, well, is that really the worst could happen? It's actually a stoic philosophy. Right. Seneca talked about, is this the condition I so fared? You know, wear the worst clothes, eat rice and beans for a week, you know, live in squalor, and don't shower and walk around in sandals for a while. Is it really that bad? No, you can survive it, and you probably, you know, make it better. It doesn't necessarily mean you need the resources in order to be resourceful. You use what you have. And that's all entrepreneurship is, right? It's moving resources from areas of low yield to areas of high yield. And that's all we've ever done. And once you get that from the 30,000 foot view, you're just now training yourself to see opportunities wherever they exist, even in the homeless shelter industry, to make multiple franchises of homeless shelters and be an international homeless shelter at some point home. But, you know, I don't, you know, that's just me.

But. But I'll give you an example what happened last fall. Because it took me to a new depth of this fear that I did not even realize was in my subconscious, which is that, you know, I was. If you would have asked me last fall before my adrenal exhaustion hit me, what was my biggest fear? Anyway, we were on a very upward trajectory in our business. And I was afraid that when I got sick that I wouldn't be able. I wouldn't have enough money to pay my team. And I had this fear of, oh my gosh, the conversation of telling my team I can't pay them and then who am I as a business person that I wouldn't be able to pay people who have already done their services to me like that just felt humiliating. And I'll tell you what happened. When I got so sick, I had to shut down a whole division of my company, our agency, and we shut down our agency. I had to let some of my team members go. Thankfully, they were all prepaid, so nobody was let go without being paid. However, my fear was greater than what I actually experienced when I had to go to let them go, to say, hey, we're shutting down this, this division. I apologize, you know, we're making some changes in our company. Their response to me was so gracious. I was in tears because I was facing. I was having those conversations that I feared. And those conversations were like, Vanessa, you call me up. Some of them even said, I will transition at no expense to you. You call me up if you ever want to do this again. And it would be my pleasure to work with you again. And I just felt I was humbled by that entire experience. And then I also realized, like, okay, like, we hit our depths, our lows of revenue when we were letting, you know, cut out that division, letting some people go. And I also discovered, like, it's okay. Allow the healing journey to take place. And we came back stronger and came back smarter, creating with even more streamlined business the revenues that we were creating with that agency division.

That's beautiful. I really love that because I'm relatively new. Like, I mostly did partnerships for a long time. And now I have a team, six people on the core team and 12 on this new project. So, like, it's getting pretty big, and it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of personalities. And I'm starting to get to the point where it's getting overwhelming, and I get nervous sometimes and I have to remind myself, like, hey, you know, this is going to be okay. Like, these people are not going to starve. It's not up to me to provide everything for everybody all the time. It's a collaboration, right? And everybody bring something to the table, and we're going to create more together. And that's really the message here at Make More Marbles is like, you know, we could compete with each other, right? You can compete with people out in the world, or you can just compare yourself to where you were in the past. You could look at the chasm of despair and say, oh, my God, I'll never be where I want to be, or my team will die. Or I'll be alone in the rain somewhere. Probably, you know, a dog will pee on me, and I'll, you know, people spit on me when they walk by, or whatever your worst case scenario is. And you could just look and say, is that real? Or could I not fight my way back from that if I really had to? If I really had to pull up my shoes? Like, I've been through worse than that. I always love to say, I've been to where bad is this, isn't it.

Yeah. There's a philosophy that says the greatest thing that we fear, we've already experienced, and we're afraid of feeling that again. And, you know, one of the things that was super profound to me in experiencing that adrenal fatigue was. And it took me to the depths of facing fears that I didn't even realize I had. But what happened was, you know, what I do with my clients is I help them. I like to say I'm a lyricist. So I listen to the song of their heart, like, what they want to create in the world. And I happen to be really good with marketing words without compromising the core essence of an individual. So I can take what they're saying and say, oh, is this what you're trying to say? And they're like, oh, yeah, that's it. And now all of a sudden, their message is resonating with their audience, and I'm able to say, wait, is this what you want to create? Here's what I see about your genius. Here's what I see about your story that needs to come forward in your marketing in order for you to be more be able to sell more of your services or sell more of your work. And so what? And with that is a huge reliance on my brain. There's a reliance on my brain. There is a presence component of like, let me be present to you as an individual and really hear you hear the words of what you're not saying. Pay attention to what I may intuitively pick up. But there is a strategic part of my brain that's present. Well, when I experience adrenal exhaustion, it has a huge component on your prefrontal cortex. So your capacity to reason, your capacity to rationalize and analyze is compromised. You're much more in the front, fight, flight, or freeze, you know, reptilian part of your brain. So all of a sudden I my memory recall, I would have a client say something, and I would say, you need to go back and listen to this recording because the second sentence that you said is where your juices. That's what you need to use in your marketing. But I couldn't even recall it. I knew it was there, but I couldn't say the words back because my brain wasn't operating. That was so freaky scary for. And as a matter of fact, I was like, wait, if my brain is compromised. And at the time my voice was being compromised, I couldn't speak fully, and I'm a writer, and my hands were feeling arthritic and inflamed, and I couldn't type. And I was like, wait, if I lose my brain, my voice, and my hands, I don't have a business. And I called up one of my friends in tears. I was like, I'm scared. Where my business is this going to go? As a matter of fact, I had just booked a client for $20,000, and he was an expert in adrenal fatigue and fibromyalgia and other ailments that affected some of the same hormones. And when he started asking me, hey, let me help you. What's going on with you? When he heard what was happening with my brain, he's like, I want a refund, because if your brain is compromised, I can't pay my 20k to you to do this work. And it made me feel scared. It was like, oh, my gosh, what if I don't have my brain? And what I realized was that in some of the instances as a child growing up that I used my brain for survival in very intense situations, There wasn't an adult comforting me and holding me and saying, it's okay, you're going to be safe, so that my emotions could be settled. It was immediately, Vanessa. You know, there was a guy, for instance, there was a guy who had broken into our house when I was 8 years old, and my parents were gone. And he. I was the oldest at the time. There were four of us, and I was the babysitter, but I was only 8. 8 or 9. And he broke in, and he had a knife at my throat. And he's like, if you scream right now, I'm going to cut your throat. And I didn't know what to do, but I was like, if you don't leave, I will scream. And it was. He ended up leaving. The immediate thing that occurred was the police came with my parents, and they, you know, when my parents got home, they called the police, and I was immediately taken to the police station and questioned, what was he wearing? What. What was, you know, what did he look like? Again, all this stuff up here in the brain, right? What did he look like as a little child? My brain was saying, get this right, Vanessa. He's got to get caught. And it's up to you. Get this right, or he might come back. Well, the tragic thing is he did come back. He did come back. And when he came back, he was wearing the same exact thing. And when I looked at him, I was like, oh, my God, I did it wrong. I described it wrong. He's wearing the same thing. And I described it wrong. And if I would have gotten it right, this wouldn't have happened. He wouldn't have come back. And during examining this, when I went to my adrenal exhaustion and the fear of losing my brain, I realized in that client counseling was the trigger for it. I remember sitting at a Barnes, and, no, I think we're at Panera with my husband in tears. He's like, what are you afraid of? I was like, who am I if I don't have a brain? Who am I if I don't have the capacity to. To use my brain to serve in this way? And I realized, and I was in tears, like, who would be crying so much about losing their identity as their brain? But I realized as a child, there was this belief that if my brain didn't figure it out, like, my life was at risk, this guy could come back. And as a child, I was also praised for my brain. Oh, let's test her. And my accolades and academics. And so there was so much that was tied onto this attachment to the brain. And when my health was. Was compromising my brain function and my capacity to speak. And I would do interviews like this during the time And I would be like, I couldn't grasp the words to say. And I'd be like, oh, I was trying to say this. And I. And I used the wrong word. And it was like, I'm not gonna be able to share my message if I don't have my brain. And I realized that it's almost like those of us who have these places that we think are going to be the solution of what we need to be successful, and we're trying to avoid a feeling or a fear of something we've experienced in the past as a child. It's almost like if you've ever drowned, or I mean, almost drowned as a child, and you're trying to keep your head above water, and you as an adult, get thrown into, let's say, an ocean and there's some undercurrent and you're feeling that same feeling your body gets, your anatomic nervous system gets on reaction to put you back in the frame of mind as you were as a child. But what did I do in my function of life? I created life rafts. Lifesavers of intelligence, of success, of achievement, of, you know, all those were my life rafts to ensure I wouldn't drown. And now, when I was getting sick and they were no longer there to be grasped for me, I had to realize, like Vanessa, relax, feel the depth of this fear and this emotion and realize, you're going to be okay. Relax and float on your back. And it was for the first time ever that I've had to recognize and embrace, and it's my belief and philosophy that I am not alone on this journey, that there is such thing as divine partnership. And there's an invitation, a passage that really speaks to me that says, are you tired? Are you worn out? Are you burned out? And the invitation is, come with me, work with me. See how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything on you that is ill fitting. Come with me and you'll learn how to live freely and lightly. And so I constantly am praying and asking for wisdom and saying, how can I get insights that I may not have otherwise seen? That my capacities of brain and voice and hands are not all that I have accessible to me. If I'll be present and still myself and not be afraid of the fears, it opens up solutions that I never saw before. It opens up insights that I never saw before. It opens up breakthroughs that I never saw before. It opens up connection to my heart that I never had before. Connection to my heart Connects to my audience, connecting to my heart creates greater sales. And so I embraced that. And I have to say that it was, you know, although it felt super scary at the time, it was one of the greatest gifts that I have received along this entrepreneurial journey was going to those steps and coming out on the other side of healing. Some of those subconscious fears that I'd had no idea were playing below the surface until I saw them starting to be taken away. And as a matter of fact, one of my girlfriends, she said. I called her up and I said, what if I lose my brain, my voice, my hands? Like, I won't have a business? And she goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop. Did you just listen to yourself, Vanessa? And I said, what? She goes, you didn't even name your heart. Maybe everything else is shutting down so you'll listen to your heart.

I really love that, Vanessa. Thank you. You know, we talk about the heart versus the head, right? When you're in your head, you're dead. Having more capacity than you could ever imagine. It almost becomes this vessel through which that divine magic can flow. Those things that you could never have the answer to at that time. And only when you can step back and stop forcing and just allow and stop resisting and just kind of let it flow, that's when life opens up to. You have the right answer. You have what you needed all along. And life had to give you a really hard lesson. I had to give you a truck full of bricks, if you will, to use a metaphor for my own life, to really see that. So I'm sure there are other people listening at home that are either on the verge of adrenal fatigue or struggling with it and may not even know it. But what are some of the more, like, practical signs that you say, okay, this is what's going on with my body. And then what are some, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 steps that people can use to change their diet, their exercise, their sleep habits, maybe cutting out caffeine or what have you? What has really shifted for you besides just taking more time to flow and be in grace?

So I'm a huge believer of the connection that we're all spirit, mind, body, emotion, all of it integral beings. And so when I give the solutions, it'll be mindful of that. But I'll give you just some of the warning signs that I had no idea were buildup of adrenal exhaustion. And it's not something that happens immediately. It's built up over time. So some of the warning signs is most people, it Begins as a digestive issue. So you might not, you might have ibs or you might not fully process foods. I became like dairy intolerant. Never had been dairy intolerant. I was waking up at three in the morning, couldn't go back to sleep. This short term memory component was being compromised. I was feeling in a state of anxiety and overwhelmed way more often than I used to be in the past. I would actually have little seasons of like, I didn't want to get out of bed. Like the very work that inspires me and, and that was what I lived for. I remember just being like, can I just check out can nobody in the world need me today? And can I just do a Netflix binge? And nobody call me or email me or need me? I need a break. Those were warning signs that I ignored along the way. And what actually, when I came crashing down, I mean, I couldn't even get out of bed. Like, going to the grocery store was four tasks and I had to only choose one. It was either going to the store, bring in the groceries in from the car, putting them away. Like there was multiple steps in the process and I didn't have enough energy for all of them. Or writing out the list was the fourth. And so it's like I couldn't do all of them or put the laundry in the laundry. Like, God forbid I didn't have enough energy to switch it over, to put it into the dryer or take it out and fold it or put it away. I only had enough energy for one of those things. And like I said, the brain and the voice and the hands were compromised. So the things that I would say to anybody, oh my gosh, especially overachievers like us who are entrepreneurs. There's a certain archetype of individuals that are successful in business. And I think it's part of why at the beginning of our conversation, we latch onto this hustle because we have the capacity to do that. We are resilient through what we've been through. We drive, we get up and get, do it again and again and again. And we don't heed those warning signs. And so for me, it's a matter of pacing. So for instance, with my girlfriends in a mastermind that we've met in for five years, I said, okay, here are my goals for the year. Now I'm going to cut them in half. Now I'm going to cut them in half because we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and we underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years. And so I've learned that I will get it done. It doesn't all have to be this year or this quarter. Let me pace myself out. All my books don't have to be written this year, all my programs don't have to be launched this year. All the stages I'm going to speak on don't have to be this year. And I've actually taken more of a, you know, just a longer term view about things and given myself permission to like, what's the rush? Let me enjoy the journey along the way, celebrate more frequently. My gosh, so many of us don't even take time. I started to incorporate that with my clients and it changed the entire, entire atmosphere and culture of our calls. To start with, celebration first instead of goals, now practical things. I highly, highly recommend because what's at the core of any illness is inflammation. What changed my life is cutting out gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine, alcohol. So I cut out all of those for three months and all of my digestive issues went away. My adrenal fatigue healed within six months. Six months. But even today I cut those things out, caffeine. At that point I was up to four cups a day. But caffeine actually causes stress to our adrenals and can disrupt our hormones. And so cutting out caffeine, even though we may most people live on it, I cut it out. The gluten, the dairy and the sugar are the biggest inflammatory response, culprits. And we think, oh my gosh, how can I live without that? For me, I've discovered just going cold turkey that you eventually, by about day eight, the cravings go away. As a matter of fact, my son's 13 years old and unbeknownst to me and without any prompting from my husband or myself, for Lent, he decided to give up sugar. 13 year old boy. I was like, whoa, kudos, we'll see how this goes. And he's like, mom, there's cupcakes at school, there's cake at school. I have no cravings. So it made me realize this is no matter the age, it's a real thing, that cocaine is not as addictive to our brains as sugar is. So I say remove those, those from, from your, from your life. And there's so much pushing for like, get good sleep, get good sleep. But I know when I was in the middle of that, I would wake up at one or three and couldn't go back to sleep. And I was like, I will do anything to sleep well. I didn't want to get addicted to sleeping pills. So I didn't take any sleeping pills, but I did take like natural herbs and stuff. But it seemed like nothing worked until I got my blood sugar regulated. I got my, my digestive system. At the core is your digestion, your blood sugar. And then adrenals are actually triggered by each of those. And so sometimes we're told give a priority to sleep. But the thing is that we are desperately wanting sleep but we can't seem to get it no matter what. Well, I started turn off my phone and any electronics an hour before bedtime. I had a nighttime ritual to calm down. I do a daily bath that include Epsom salts, which is magnesium, which is one of the substances that our body needs the most. It contributes to good sleep. It actually helps us absorb the other nutrients from our foods. So I incorporated daily bath that I still do. I incorporated daily meditation, whether it is from my yoga class or whether it's from an app called headset space that I encourage people to do. And you talked about breath. The difference between fear and excitement is just the breath is missing. We don't give credence and value to our breath. And our breath is actually it's a way that we detach from our bodies by not breathing into our full diaphragm. And there's so much healing by allowing that full oxygenation that can take place by getting full breaths in and out. And that can actually create positive responses into our brain as well. So incorporating meditation, prayer or breath work daily. Even if you get the Headspace app which is just a little ten minute guided meditation, I say start there something little to ground yourself. Let's see what else. Adaptogenic herbs. There's some really good adaptogenic herbs that and there's some companies that do them as a blend for adrenals. Rhodiola, ashwagandha. These are some substances that are particular.

To little plug for my friends over at Lost Empire.

So.

All the brothers, Logan, Cloud, Zane, all those guys, they make the best stuff on the market. So yeah, I'm a daily believer in all that. ZMA is a huge one. And you talked about magnesium and zinc. Zinc is 200 enzymatic prices in the body. It's all immunity. Magnesium is awesome to take at night. Vitamin D. A lot of people don't get enough sunshine. That's another way to reset your circadian rhythm. Melatonin to help sleep for a little while to get you back on the right rhythm. Cold, cold plunges can re trigger your hormones. Get rid of some of those dying Mitochondria and regenerate them. Play just playing with your friends. When was the last time you went as an adult to the park and just ran around, played tag with your friends or threw a Frisbee around or took your dog out to the park? I mean, come on. Like, we take it for granted that we're bulletproof and we can't. You know, we could just go forever and never play. But, you know, a lot of people, and my good friend Charlie Hone wrote a book about this. They get so wound up and so fatigued and they're taking all these medications, caffeine, to just kind of feel okay enough until they hit a wall and it's too late. So don't get to that place if you can. And you mentioned another one. Screens. Screens are so important. Like, you can't get all that blue light all the time, especially at night. It's going to. It's going to whack your whole process. And this might seem like a lot of things, but try a few things, right? And then may add on a few more, see how you feel and just track over time. Like, we need to be scientists of ourselves and understand that the world we live in today is bombarding us with input that human beings haven't had for 250,000 years. And we're not evolving that fast. So, you know, be kind to yourself in this modern age with all these proclivities that we have.

Yeah. And the thing is that I. Like I mentioned, you know, some of us think that I'll get to a certain success level, then I'll have the time to do personal care. And I say, you know what your best marketing strategy is? Creating a life you love. Your best business strategy is self care. Because if you don't have your health, you could lose your brain. We're not guaranteed to have it. You could lose other components. And you're actually we. I've discovered by. As a matter of fact, years ago, my coaches recommended these things to me and I was like, you don't understand. I'm a mom of three kids. I got a husband, I got friends, I got. Run a business, multiple businesses. Sometimes I don't. I don't have time to have a plant and nurture it as a reminder to nurture myself. I'm going to kill that plant. I don't have time to read poetry. Are you kidding me?

What did you just say right there? I'm going to kill that plant. Really? I'm going to kill myself is what you're saying. You Know you're running around, you don't have time to water a plant. Are you kidding me?

Yeah, yeah, that's what I used to tell myself. And so what I've discovered now is I have to do those things. They're non negotiable as a matter of fact, because my greatest inspiration is created from white space and my moneymaker in my business is being able to operate from a place of inspiration. So yeah, I could stay behind my computer pounding away on other things I could do in my business, but I could delegate that stuff. No one can delegate the voice of the company. No one could delegate the vision. No one can delegate those components that require me being aligned. And so I actually have little self care checklists. I didn't even think about putting that as a gift that your listeners could access. I probably could.

And this is why I love this because like without this, guys, there's no foundation. If the foundation is not solid, you can't build anything on top. And if you do, it's going to fall like a house of cards. Eventually you can have all the money in the world, all the success, and if you're not healthy, what the hell does it matter? You're never going to be able to buy back your health. So, yeah, we'd love any resources you have in us. We'd really love. And then I'd like to open it up for you to, since you've been so gracious and sharing with us. You know, this is the Make More Marbles podcast. We want to contribute back to you as well. So for anybody listening at home, what's, you know, what's the thing that we can help you do in the world? What's a connection, a resource, an opportunity, a person, a system? Crops. I like that analogy or that metaphor or that acronym. That's the word I was looking for. Brains working that we could add to your life and help your mission move forward.

Well, first of all, donate a luxury bed to a homeless shelter. You never know who needs one. But in all seriousness, I, you know, my mission is supporting purpose driven entrepreneurs to get the clarity of what is their signature work and message they're supposed to put out into the marketplace. And so if there's anyone who needs support around that and if they're saying, how do I know what my zone of genius is, Vanessa? So I'm not spending energy that I don't have. How do I build a business on my gifts and talents and background? How do I share a message that resonates with the market? These are the Things that I help my clients do in our brand called Signature, which is about creating high end clients by creating high end programs and servicing at the highest levels possible to create massive experiential results in your clients lives. And so it is the intersection of personal development and business development. And I would just encourage, if there's anyone who has an interest in that to look up the resources that we have. I do have a blueprint on that specifically my website is vanessahorn.com so if we can serve in that capacity.

I.

Am interviewing people who are, you know, one of my brands is I'll have what she's having. And my belief is that the way that we attract people to our businesses is that we are being that person that we say to ourselves, I'll have what I'm having. And if we don't, it's because we're out of alignment. And so in order to support entrepreneurs, I don't know everything about every area. I'm a marketing and sales, that's my area of expertise and more the inner world of an entrepreneur. But I'm pulling together these resources of people who are in health and wellness, in relationships, in these other areas of success to support entrepreneurs. So they're getting this holistic view of how to best show up in the world, fully aligned and shining and being better equipped to do their work in the world. And so if you know of guests or there's others who are listening who say, I'm an expert in this area, Vanessa, I would love to serve entrepreneurs. I'm helping to bring that collaboration together. So that's another thing. I did want to read this quote as it relates as a summary to some of the things that we've been talking about today. And it's this quote by the Dalai Lama. Do you mind if I read it?

Oh, please, yes. Thank you.

And I just. The irony hit me of, you know, when I was sharing my story about being being born in India, where the Dalai Lama is, it just struck me here for the first time that this is what I'm quoting is him. But he says, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, the Dalai Lama answered, man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he's so anxious about the future that he doesn't enjoy the present. The result being he does not live in the present or in the future. He lives as if he's never going to die and then dies having never really lived.

Hmm. That's a very sobering reminder from man who has seen a few things and spoken to a few people and experienced many lifetimes. I really appreciate you being on the show today, Vanessa. How can people reach out to you if they have guests, a connection? I have a few ideas myself which I'll tell you off screen, but where can people reach out to you?

I would just say go to vanessahorn.com There's a number of free resources there and a contact section if somebody wants to reach out if there's something that they heard and if they're and I'll make sure I'll make sure that my team does put that list there and perhaps we can give you a link to it to put in the show notes as that resource of what helped me create these new patterns and routine that allowed me to honor creating success while also being able to honor the grace and ease and care for myself holistically.

I love it. And if we could have the team make a special URL for Make More Marbles, I guess it could be VanessaHorn.com Marbles. Simple as that.

Perfect.

Go to VanessaHorn.com Marbles to get Vanessa's resources. Do check out the site, check out her books. She has two books for sale on Amazon wherever fine books are sold and those are I'll have what she's having and also profit with honor. Thank you so much, Vanessa for being on the show and sharing your story with us. It's really great to hear somebody who not only has taken on the world and, you know, done so many amazing things, but also has the vulnerability to share some of the struggles that she's dealt with so that people don't feel alone. At the end of the day, people respect you for your successes, but they'll love you for your failures. So thank you for that and we really enjoyed having you on the show. So on behalf of everybody at Make More Marbles, thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast. For more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing abundant life in your health, wealth and relationships, whatever that means to you, head on over to makemoremarbles.com check out our cool Experience Planer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or Google Play wherever you're listening to your podcast and please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.